Tahir Hemphill

Tahir is an award-winning creative director and multimedia artist working in the areas of interdisciplinary thought, collaboration and research.

As creative director, Hemphill has planned strategy for businesses in the entertainment, advertising, and nonprofit industries. He has conceived and implemented design-based solutions for brands including Mercedes Benz, L'Oreal, Verizon, and Microsoft. Hemphill has been a consultant for Y&R, Publicis, Grey, Saatchi & Saatchi and Burrell Communications.

Hemphill's creative process explores the vicinity between the profound and the profane, between art and science. His artwork was featured in the Talk to Me exhibit at MoMA which explored design and the communication between people and objects. Hemphill's work has been exhibited at Siggraph (Siggraph 2002); Queens Museum of Art (Queens International Biennial, 2002) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Black New York Photographers of the Twentieth Century, 1999).

Hemphill holds a B.A. in Spanish Language from Morehouse College, a Strategic Planning Certificate from Miami Ad School and a M.S. in Communications Design from Pratt Institute -- where he authored and designed a treatise on the methodologies of creatives who use traditional advertising techniques to promote subversive and prosocial campaigns.

Currently Hemphill operates the Brooklyn-based creative enterprise, Staple Crops. His current project, The Hip-Hop Word Count is a searchable rap almanac. Hemphill also manages the media arts education program for Red Clay Arts, a nonprofit incubator for contemporary artists that he co-founded in 2000. Tahir is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee and holds the position of Assistant Director, Research at the Hip Hop Education Center at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.

Session: Champagne Always Stains My Silk

(The Hip Hop Word Count) An in depth overview of the Champagne Always Stains My Silk Datavis which maps the Champagne brand mentions by rapper from 1980 - 2010

It’s not every day our minds get blown by an original concept. In this case, the social experiment is entitled The Hip-Hop Word Count (HHWC). It is a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day. - Standard Culture Blog